Echoes In Her Mind
by loOkMA-iTyPeLiKeDiS
Summary: It's hard for Jade to pinpoint exactly when hating Tori wasn't just *hating* Tori anymore.


_lmao still my otp for this show even hella years later; i__ still contend that jori should have ended up in a relationship_

/

Jade considered herself a misanthropist but despite that moniker, there were very few people she actually hated. Most everyone she was indifferent about. She just considered them gnats to ignore until they did something that shifted her from mildly irate (her default) to definitively irate.

But even then, there weren't many people or things in life that could affect Jade. She was the impenetrable fortress, and if she deemed someone unworthy, she just shucked them out of her world. That was what she did with everyone who she couldn't stand, and it was a system that worked with everyone.

Well, everyone except for Victoria Vega.

And Tori? Jade _hated_.

She made her sick.

Not because she was some annoying little princess, goody-two-shoes, might-as-well-be-a-southern-belle-with-big-sparkling-eyes-and-big-sparkling-dreams-of-making-it-big-in-a-big-city kind of gal who guys would dream of bringing home to introduce to their parents because she was perfectly behaved and would bring homemade muffins. Surprisingly, not because of that.

It was because Tori scared the shit out of Jade.

Somehow, she'd crawled her way under her skin and nestled tightly there like some sort of scabies infection. And infection was the only word that _could_ describe what the fuck Jade had to have been thinking to move into an apartment with Tori of all people in their second year of uni.

Jade had speculated a long time ago what it was about the perky brunette that ticked her off so much. She wanted to say it was Beck kissing Tori all those years ago. Wondered if it was how the girl seemed to have been dealt a really lucky hand in life. Or if it was because they were total opposites.

She could admit she'd always had some attractions to some girls here and there. There'd been a time in junior high when she'd thought Cat was abnormally cute, up until the girl glued her hand to her face. But she'd also been seriously attracted to Sam Puckett when they first met. It was a short lived, but intense crush—though she hated that disgusting, girly word with a passion—and admiration over finding a fellow kindred spirit of badassery, despite both of them having been dealt a rough hand in life. But she'd caught Sam's mom in bed with her own dad once and that had been enough to end the infatuation.

But this rancid _thing_ with Tori was a completely different feeling than those fleeting crushes. Tori lit a fire in her that she'd thought she could only have with Beck. And it confused her. Jade didn't understand why it was that her chipper not really friend made her heart race and palms grow clammy and heat pool under her navel when she traipsed about their apartment wearing only a thin towel barely covering her tush with beads of water still glistening on her soft skin and her strawberry scented locks piled high on her head in a sloppy bun. Her long legs and slender waist. The slope of her dainty, flushed neck when Jade would saunter by and blow lightly just to watch the hairs at the back stand up in surprise.

(Sue her. Jade had a thing for necks).

And for some reason, Jade was especially a fan of the nauseating way Tori opened up a new day, yanking open the blinds and waking up earlier than normal to try to get them both to eat a complete, healthy breakfast before they both left for their first classes of the day. Her obnoxious optimism over some dumb dream that only the dopey brunette could have. The way she always smiled wide even when Jade threatened to break glass on her head. The way she curled up next to Jade on the couch, legs in her lap as she asked for advice about her next dumb date of the week, yet another idiot guy who could never understand Tori the way Jade did. The way she'd string popcorn in Jade's hair when they sat at their dining table and _tried to_ study. The way she'd mope and whine and cry about stupid professors not giving in to her cutesy 'but I'm so sweet and innocent' act when trying to bump up her scores.

But especially the way she'd wrap her arms around Jade, warm hands sliding across her back, face buried in her neck, soft body clinging to Jade's, that familiar vanilla and sugar cookie scent on Tori's skin making Jade swoon.

(Figuratively, of course).

Jade wasn't lame enough to truly feel that mushy, saccharine bullshit. But there was a certain part of her deep, _deep_ down that had to force herself to admit that to a certain extent, somehow, Tori had her pussy-whipped, and she sure as hell wasn't even getting any.

'Vega Voodoo', André had once called it.

Jade called it 'Tori's Future Black Eye'.

She hadn't understood what Beck had meant two years prior when they graduated and he called off their relationship for good, citing that they were toxic for each other. That she needed someone who could handle her like Tori. And while it had hurt and while she'd been infuriated—and while she'd definitely trashed his trailer and ripped out the engine beyond repair to the point he could no longer drive it cross country like he wanted—she understood now.

Jade understood now that for some unfathomable reason her attachment to Tori went farther than just their addicting, complicated friendship.

And maybe one of the hardest decisions of her life had been letting go of a longtime comforting relationship in her life to focus on a girl she wanted to strangle for being too clean cut and peppy half the time. But she'd listened to her heart, and she honestly didn't regret it. (Much). Not when coming home to Tori's adorable, sunny grins and inane stories about stupid shit like getting a discount on cheese because she flirted with the deli guy made Jade feel like she'd found the family she'd been desperately seeking for years.

She wasn't sure how she'd gone from hating the chipper idealism to finding it a light to draw her out of her usual dark and dreary pessimistic days. She wasn't sure how she'd gone from hating any physicality whatsoever to wanting Tori's soft, casual touches and nails gently scratching her scalp all the time. She wasn't sure how she'd gone from hating the constant blathering of mundane conversation wrecking her silence to welcoming Tori's incessant whining while they made dinner.

But here she was.

Jade considered herself a misanthropist. But Tori made her not want to be one.

And that was what scared the shit out of her.


End file.
